Handful of Dust
by Kathey27
Summary: The life and times of a wallflower. Part of the Violet 'verse.


**A/N: Because I think Mark was beautiful and so much could have been done with that quiet man…and I love _Flashpoint_ and David is awesome ^_^**

**This lines up with the Violet 'verse but you don't have to read that story to get this one, except maybe the ending but whatever.**

**Oh and there's some incest in here, technically and if that bothers you, turn away now please.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned anything Mark would be alive and friends with Ruby and being his quiet, adorable self.**

**xxxxxx**

**Handful of Dust:**

When Mark is just seven he sees something really bad happen to his big brother. It's a cold, dry evening with silence filling the air and he walks into the room they share to see a cloaked figure standing over Daniel. Killing Daniel. He doesn't understand what's going on so he does the only thing he knows how. He charges forward and starts to beat and claw, shouting at the thing trying to take away all he has left.

All he gets in the end is a concussion and a dead brother.

xxxxxx

(Mark will learn later that it had been a Shtriga and he couldn't have done a thing).

xxxxxx

His mother, Maryln Campbell ships him off after that, something about not wanting him to make his father's mistakes.

All Mark understands is that his brother is gone and it's his dad's fault.

xxxxxx

When Mark is ten, he shoots his first gun. Turns out that cousin his mother had sent him to isn't all that safe. Cousin Angie tells him two weeks into his arrival that he'll have to learn; that there's no escaping the life. For anyone.

He learns how to take down two hundred pound men at eight and when he's nine how to hit a moving target with a dagger from yards away.

He cries himself to sleep every night for three years.

xxxxxx

His first hunt is during summer break and it's a ghost that leaves him with three cracked ribs and a broken leg.

Cousin Angie and her daughter Gwen make it out fine.

When he asks if he can have something for the pain Angie passes him a bottle of Whiskey and tells him to shut up and be a man.

He's twelve.

xxxxxx

(Mark stops talking at thirteen and concentrates on cleaning his guns and killing as many monsters as he can because someone has to do it).

xxxxxx

Cousin Angie stops sending him to school after the sixth fight and instead hands him a calculus textbook and tells him to start reading because no one else is going to do it for him.

Mark teaches himself equations and theorems and analytical essays and French and Latin and has it all perfected by fifteen.

xxxxxx

He starts to keep a journal because there are days when he can't even remember his own name through the pain.

xxxxxx

Mark has never asked for much. He has Cousin Angie and she watches out for him and he has Gwen and he watches out for her and he has hunting but when he turns sixteen he begins to remember his mother.

xxxxxx

(Mark goes back home between hunts and when his mother starts crying at the sight of him hard and damaged he moves away from her touch and shakes his head.

"I don't need anything from you Maryln."

Mark never sees her again).

xxxxxx

The pain's a nine that day.

xxxxxx

"Do you ever want anything more than this life Mark?" Gwen whispers at night when she's snuck her way into his room because she has nightmares too and Cousin Angie doesn't have to know.

"What else is there?" He replies and continues to gaze up his blank ceiling.

xxxxxx

When Mark turns seventeen he loses his virginity to the nice Latina girl across from their home base.

He can never understand half of what she's saying but he loves that she smells of coconut and how soft her smile is and that afterwards she lets him hold her.

xxxxxx

(Mark has to burn her body later when a demon possesses her on a date gone wrong and she doesn't make it through the exorcism).

xxxxxx

Cousin Angie gets ripped to shreds by a Rakshasa a year later and then it's just him and Gwen but that's okay because he knows how to take care of her.

xxxxxx

(Mark burns his second body with empty eyes and arms tight around his now everything).

xxxxxx

They meet Christian just after his twenty-first birthday and he feels a tiny bit of relief at having someone else to take care of Gwen with him.

xxxxxx

He ends up taking care of Christian and cleaning up after his sloppy mistakes.

xxxxxx

Christian becomes his best friend and teaches him things he's never dreamed of and teaches him about their family history and shows him a picture of his father, Joshua Campbell.

xxxxxx

Mark keeps the picture besides the one of his mother in the bottom of his duffel.

xxxxxx

That day the pain goes down to a six.

xxxxxx

He hears the name Winchester circling around but shrugs it off because he doesn't have time to worry about anyone else.

xxxxxx

When Mark turns twenty-three he kills his first Shtriga and Gwen gets drunk with him that night and when they kiss and wake in each other's arm, she turns away and he has to pretend it never happened.

xxxxxx

Christian asks what happens after a Wendigo hunt that'd almost ended bad when Gwen had had her back turned to him.

Mark thins his lips and says nothing.

xxxxxx

"Mark – "

"It's alright Gwen. Never happened."

xxxxxx

(Mark realizes he's in love with Gwen three weeks later and has to drown out the looks men give her with Whiskey. Lots of Whiskey).

xxxxxx

It goes back up to a nine.

xxxxxx

When he turns twenty-five he gets his fifth scar.

It's below his third rib and matches two other ones that rest on the small of his back.

The first two had been courtesy of his father's drunken nights before he'd left to become a full time hunter.

xxxxxx

They meet Arlene on a witch-hunt after she saves Christian's ass from a bloody death.

She becomes part of the family fast.

xxxxxx

Mark sleeps with Arlene four times before she leaves him for Christian.

Gwen eyes them with jealously for a while before focusing her attentions on the men that follow her around.

xxxxxx

Mark's the best man at Christian and Arlene's wedding and as he watches his best friend kiss the pretty redhead, his eyes fall on Gwen and he holds her gaze as the Elvis impersonator binds his friends together.

xxxxxx

(Mark realizes that love is never enough when Gwen kisses his lips softly and tells him that she can't).

xxxxxx

He gets drunk as Christian and Arlene go on their "honeymoon" and spends the night with a skinny brunette named Gaby.

The pain's close to a ten.

xxxxxx

Mark has never needed much. He has Gwen (except he doesn't) and he has Christian (except he's one hundred miles away now) and he has Arlene (except she's the one who's taken Christian away) but he still wonders about what it would be like to be free.

xxxxxx

He visits the suburbs and spends two hours sitting on a park bench watching everyone else's perfect lives pass him by.

He leaves feeling alive and happy because all he'd really needed was a reminder of what he's fighting for.

(Lie. Having Gwen in his arms would help a bit too).

xxxxxx

When Mark turns twenty-seven he separates from the family for a short while and ends up in Japan, hunting an Okami.

He comes back seven months later to see Gwen happily dating a civilian and Christian and Arlene happily hunting together.

He leaves again in two weeks and doesn't come back for a year.

xxxxxx

"You came back to us."

"…You guys are my family…where else would I come back to?"

xxxxxx

After a hunt that lands Gwen in the hospital he stops trying to protect her and focuses on himself because if he hadn't distracted her, she might have been able to get out of the way in time.

xxxxxx

Christian asks because he's his best friend and best friends just know things like that.

Mark tells him everything is fine.

xxxxxx

(Mark will never know that Gwen had sent Christian because she needed to know).

xxxxxx

He starts to drink more and hunt solo more and calls up his father one evening.

xxxxxx

He finds Joshua Campbell five states over hunting a Trickster.

Joshua eyes him up and down and asks what the hell it is he wants.

"From you? Nothing, sir."

Mark never sees him again.

xxxxxx

The pain that day is at a seven.

xxxxxx

Mark goes to Gwen and she holds his hand that night as they stare up at the dirty motel ceiling.

xxxxxx

When Mark is twenty-nine a devil's gate cracks open and he starts to hear down the grapevine stories of two brothers and their snarky demon friend and shakes his head.

xxxxxx

He has never been one to believe in black and white.

He likes to see the grey because after all, isn't that what hunters are?

xxxxxx

He captures an angry demon and when she starts to spew out lies about him and his family he cuts her head off because he'd always had a bit of a temper.

xxxxxx

Arlene snorts and waves it off. "You? A temper? Please Mark. You're a total sweetheart. You can never speak more than thirty words at a time let alone yell at anyone."

He looks down at his bloody hands and can't fully convince himself that it's true.

xxxxxx

When Mark turns thirty some crazy shit starts to happen and suddenly there's a white-eyed demon going around looking for those two brother he's heard about and he's suddenly oh so very tired.

xxxxxx

Him and Gwen pair off again as Christian and Arlene head to Canada to do some snooping and they end up in bed together twice before she packs her things and disappears.

He doesn't see her for another five months.

xxxxxx

For those five months he's at a constant eight.

xxxxxx

He starts to carry Whiskey bottles around but only drinks when he has to because he is not an alcoholic and he is not his father.

xxxxxx

He visits Daniel's grave alone that year and lays down peonies because his big brother had been a sucker for them.

xxxxxx

Mark's thirty-one when the apocalypse apparently begins and it's all thanks to those Winchesters.

He asks Christian who they are and when he gets told they're distant family he smirks lightly and nods. Well all right then.

xxxxxx

He sees Gwen a few weeks later and she tells him that she doesn't love him like that and that it's wrong either way.

xxxxxx

(Mark will find out later she'd been lying).

xxxxxx

He gets three more scars that year and none of them are physical.

xxxxxx

On his thirty-second birthday he meets Samuel Campbell and Sam Winchester and starts to wonder what the hell he's gotten himself into.

xxxxxx

Gwen likes them.

Arlene tolerates them.

Christian respects them (but he's been acting strange lately anyways).

Is he the only one having a problem with these two strangers joining the family?

xxxxxx

Three months pass and it becomes normal to see Sam weightlifting in the middle of their home base and it's normal to have Samuel scowling and reading from his office.

Somehow, they've managed to find their way in.

xxxxxx

He sees Gwen exiting Sam's room a few times at night and he's back to hating the sight of the tall Winchester.

xxxxxx

Mark ignores Sam's stupid smirks and avoids Gwen but still hands her over the good hunts and helps him when he needs a second pair of hands.

xxxxxx

(Mark will never know that Gwen had been imagining him every single time).

xxxxxx

"You love me." He accuses after he catches her eyeing him and a pretty blonde hunter by the bar.

Gwen meets his gaze nervously. "It's not enough."

Mark thins his lips. "It never is, is it?"

"No." She walks away.

xxxxxx

Mark meets Ruby on one of his bad days when the pain's at a nine (almost ten) and he likes her right away.

He's told later that she's a demon and as he watches her interact with the Winchesters, he can't say he minds it all that much.

xxxxxx

He spars with Ruby and shows her the library and smiles because he knows she likes it and tries to focus on how happy she makes him and not on Gwen's angry eyes.

xxxxxx

"Gwen…you and her, something going on there?" Ruby asks because she's just that good.

"Nah."

She looks up at him with black eyes and he doesn't even flinch because she's somehow become his best friend while Christian is off following Samuel around. "I used to think that about me and a certain hazel eyed hunter."

"Oh yeah? And how did that work out for you?" He asks because he needs a happy answer.

"I married him." Her eyes revert back to blue and he finds himself grinning along with her.

xxxxxx

He goes with Ruby to shop for Gwen's birthday present and when the snarky blonde suggests handcuffs he sighs and lets it slip that Gwen isn't into that type of stuff.

She teases him for an entire week about screwing his sort of cousin twice removed.

xxxxxx

He tells Gwen he understands and that it's okay because he can't give her what she needs anyways.

(Lie).

xxxxxx

Despite that, Mark finds himself standing in front of Gwen when that Alpha comes because he loves her despite everything and he knows Ruby will take care of her and he's okay with dying alone.


End file.
